Paperback- I so wanted to love this book. It has all the ingredients needed to make me swoon (gothic horror/ rich and deeply embedded folklore/ sultry, poetic prose/ a strong female main character/ feminism) but somehow it fell… flat.

There’s no real plot; it’s all very character driven, one thing happening and then leading to the next thing happening and so on. Characters and plot points pop up and fall away quickly as if the writer had initially intended to make a much longer book.

There’s lots of lush nods to Celtic folklore which was really cool, but none of it integrated particularly well and absolutely none of it was necessary for the plot- the gothic fairytale was a backdrop to what was essentially boiled down to being a historical fiction about a girl who is forced to be engaged to a horrible man, escapes with the help of a motley crew of throwaway characters, and then finds her long lost parents estate where she becomes embroiled in a murder mystery.

Outside of our heroine, every female character save Vivienne (from the troop) are painted as villainous and/ or pathetic; they’re all set against the main character in some way, and every single one are described as fat/ frumpy characters which makes me wonder at the authors viewpoint- why are all her ‘bad’ women depicted as fat? Why does the MC always feel the need to comment on the size/ ugliness of the women she interacts with?

I loved the writing style, it was dramatic and gritty and poetic in all the good ways, I just wish the prose
had been shorter and the plot had been fuller. (And that there was more Merfolk)

A deliciously dark fairy-tale adventure... as long as you don't mind your fairy tales being full of merfolk and kelpies and other monsters who want to eat you.

But at least the monsters are honest about it. As with most fairy tales, the real monsters are the other humans.

Stopped at 44%. I just can’t get into it. It should be right up my alley and I can’t.

It’s okay this book. I wasn’t bowled over by it but it was readable.
When it was described as ‘dark fantasy’ I expected it to be just that but really it’s just a few fantasy-themed underdeveloped characters. The author doesn’t really take the time to help you get to know the characters or their thought processes (let alone the different species that are introduced/mentioned) so the story comes across as rather disjointed at times, which for a POV novel, I found very disappointing.
I’ll probably avoid future releases.

La reseña completa en https://inthenevernever.blogspot.com/2023/06/el-rumor-de-los-huesos-de-g-slatter.html

«Es posible que otras familias tengan historias de maldiciones, muchachos de hielo y damas de blanco, pero nosotros tenemos dioses antiguos, habitantes del mar y monstruos».

Ya saben lo muchísimo que he disfrutado de los dos libros de Angela Slatter que se han publicado recientemente en nuestro país: Masa madre y otros relatos (Dilatando Mentes, 2021) y De conjuros y otras penas (Duermevela, 2022). Así que cuando se anunció que Minotauro publicaría la nueva novela de la autora australiana me faltó tiempo para encargarla en la librería más cercana. Por eso hoy quiero recomendarles El rumor de los huesos, de A. G. Slatter. Un cuento de hadas gótico fascinante y ambientado en el mismo mundo que su antología Masa madre y otros relatos, que a su vez comparte universo y personajes con la novela corta De conjuros y otras penas. El nuevo libro nos llega con la traducción de Víctor Ruiz Aldana.